Arvest Bank, named by Forbes magazine as one of “America’s Best Large Employers” for 2017, operates more than 250 bank branches in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas through a group of 15 locally managed banks, each with its own board and management team. These banks serve customers in more than 120 communities, with extended weekday banking hours at many locations. Arvest also provides a wide range of banking services including loans, deposits, treasury management, credit cards, mortgage loans and mortgage servicing. Arvest is an Equal Housing Lender and Member FDIC.

AGRICULTURE

Producers urged to complete census

Oklahoma producers large and small, rural and urban, are encouraged to participate in the 2017 Census of Agriculture.

The deadline for turning in the census questionnaire is Feb. 5.

“Every producer should have it in their hands now,” said Troy Marshall, state statistician for Oklahoma, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Census participants may complete the questionnaire and return it by mail or take advantage of the updated online response form, which is mobile friendly so it can be accessed on phones, tablets and other devices.

“The web form will walk them through the questionnaire. It’ll tabulate and sum things for them,” Marshall said. “The best part is it will skip through the questionnaire as needed. So, if for example, you don’t have a commodity, it’ll skip that section and go to the next.”

Any producer who has a question about the form or who did not receive a questionnaire should contact the Census of Agriculture helpline at (888) 424-7828.

“We try to accommodate the producer in any way we possibly can,” Marshall said. “Their data is that important.”

One of the most frequently asked questions census data collectors field from producers is how to determine if they are eligible to participate in the census.

By NASS and USDA standards, a producer is anyone who produces and sells $1,000 worth of agricultural goods and has the potential to produce or sell that amount within the census year, which, in this case, is 2017.

All Census of Agriculture data is available online at www.agcensus.usda.gov and www.nass.usda.gov.

Data from the 2017 edition of the census will be available in February 2019.

— OSU communications

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